Shangal, also known as Sinjar/Shingal is a town in northern Iraq, mainly inhabited by Yazidis, which the Islamic State (IS) captured in August 2014. Hundreds of Yazidis were massacred and thousands fled to the mountains north of the town.

Fadil’s family of nine and that of his brother (5 members), took the flight from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and arrived in Armenia last night.

The families had been living in Shingal before IS captured the predominately Yazidi northern Iraqi province, also home to Arab and Assyrian minorities. Read more...(535 words)

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Artsakh Ministry of Defense reports that Azerbaijan violated the Line of Contact ceasefire 140
times last night and fired more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition, including mortars and grenade
launchers.

Tina Bastajian is a media artist and researcher born in Los Angeles and based in Amsterdam. Currently she is a lecturer of documentary film at Amsterdam University College and of media and culture at Webster University,Leiden. Among her works are “Jagadakeer… between the near and east” (2001), “A tree once grew on Pushkin” (2009), “Coffee Deposits: Topologies of chance” (an interactive documentary in collaboration with Seda Manavoglu, 2010). Last week Tina Bastajian started a workshop at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies called “Geolocated Storytelling”. Hetq spoke with Tina about the project and related issues.

When I was a little boy, I thought the day started at dawn. I did not even suspect that the elders’ day could start in darkness, at night. I was sure the New Day woke up as people did, in the morning, with the sun. I grew absorbed in thought when I discovered I had been counting the day from the wrong end for years. Something broke inside me; the childish candid and natural delusion was so naively pleasant.

I opened my eyes.

There are only the photos of the Woman-Girl. There is nobody around. Read more...(4407 words)

The Gulbenkian Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic organizations, has provided the “Armenian Jerusalem” heritage preservation website project with a new grant, enabling organizers to carry out necessary hardware upgrades and software updates.

The grant reaffirms the Foundation’s keen interest in the project and cements its support for what is hoped will help preserve the history, culture and traditions of the Armenians of Jerusalem, rescuing their saga from oblivion.

The project, launched in 2007, is the brainchild of Arthur Hagopian, former Press Officer of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and involves the creation of a website that will host a compendium of archival material chronicling the story of a community that has its roots in the city even before the advent of the Christian era. Read more...(700 words)

A senior member of the Moscow-based Russian Armenian union has denied that an upcoming trip of a group of motorcyclists to Nagorno-Karabakh will involve members of the controversial nationalist biker gang linked with the Kremlin.

The Night Wolves, whose leader Alexander Zaldostanov, nicknamed “The Surgeon”, is friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, are subject to sanctions in several countries in the West, including in the United States and Canada, for their alleged active involvement in the Russian annexation of Crimea and for helping recruit separatist fighters for Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The biker gang also sparked controversy in Europe in May when it set off from Moscow to Berlin to mark the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Four years ago, Phil Yarbrough’s horse Mercedes broke her leg and ripped apart her knee while running in her pasture outside Atlanta. "She went over a hill, and she did not come back up," Yarbrough said. Conventional wisdom suggests that horses with broken legs can't be saved. Hundreds of racehorses with injured limbs are euthanized each year. […]

34 seconds and good night. That was all the time it took for UFC star Ronda Rousey to knockout Brazilian opponent Bethe C0rreia in the highly-anticipated UFC 190 title fight. Rousey is now another step closer to a perfect career, after claiming her sixth UFC title. It was over so fast. (Via @swvnz) pic.twitter.com/LdsbCxCglL— BuzzFeed Sports (@BuzzFeedSport […]

CANTON, Ohio (AP) — The Pro Football Hall of Fame will allow Junior Seau's daughter to speak in an interview after his bust is unveiled next weekend. "Sydney will be given a chance to share thoughts about her father immediately following the unveiling of his bronzed bust," the Hall of Fame said Saturday night in a statement. "The unveilin […]

The daughter of the late Junior Seau will be able to speak live during the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony after all. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. […]

GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) — Ronda Rousey is in charge now. The unbeaten bantamweight champion is the biggest star in the UFC, and she could have staged her next title defense anywhere in the world before she moves on to her next acting job or book tour stop or red-carpet appearance. Rousey decided to fight Brazilian challenger Bethe Correia in a raucous arena at […]

The wall-to-wall coverage of the NFL's discipline of Tom Brady sometimes refers to Commissioner Roger Goodell as the "arbitrator." The NFL Players Association has made much of the fact that Goodell had a clear conflict of interest in ruling on Brady's case. The League responds that the Commissioner had the power to rule in the matter unde […]

Another transgender athlete has come out of the closet and is changing the way that we think about bodies and gender in the traditionally heteronormative sports world. Janae Marie Kroc, 42, formerly known as Matt 'Kroc' Kroczaleski, announced her transition on Instagram after a video outing her as transgender began to go viral. According to her web […]

When the cheers were a little louder than usual on Wednesday night at Citi Field, Wilmer Flores wasn't quite sure what was going on. But on Friday, after he connected in the bottom of the 12th inning, he knew exactly why the fans were screaming. The 23-year-old shortstop for the New York Mets hit a walk-off home run to give his team a 2-1 victory over t […]

By James M. Dorsey 2022 is promising to be the year of mega sporting events that potentially fly in the face of values professed by international sporting events and defy logic. Consensus is near unanimous that temperatures in Qatar are too high for a summer World Cup. Similarly, Beijing lacks the snow needed for a Winter Olympics. That didn't deter the […]

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Featured Books

Book Reviews

Armenians often wish for a tale about the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath that would make a blockbuster film and draw attention to their cause. John Balian’s new book, Gray Wolves and White Doves (CreateSpace/Amazon.com), may be that tale.

Largely autobiographical, this atmospheric novel is presented through the eyes of an innocent young boy trying to make sense of the world as he grows up amid repressive conditions in Western Armenia/Eastern Turkey during the 1960s and 70s.

This fast-paced, multi-layered narrative takes readers from Hanna Ibelin’s (a.k.a. Jonah Ibelinian’s) close-knit family life in the perilous Asia Minor region of Palu to terror and tragedy while en route to Syria’s Kamishli, to a bleak existence on the mean streets of Istanbul.Read more...(1860 words)

The Greedy Sparrow: An Armenian Tale is from the ancient Armenian oral tradition and culture, which was nearly obliterated during the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in 1915. The author learned the tale from her father, editor and columnist C.K. Garabed, who would recite it to her at bedtime. He had learned it from his own grandmother, a celebrated storyteller from the Old Country. The tale was first put to paper by Armenian poet Hovhannes Toumanian at the turn of the 20th century. Read more...(541 words, 5 images)

Turkish writer and publicist Ahmet Insel labels the initiative of the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party to pray namaz on the ruins of Ani as provocation.

In an interview with “A1+,” the publicist said the initiative was supported only by a small percentage of Turks.

“They offered namaz in Ani in protest against Christian rites carried out in Trabzon and Akhtamar. The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli said if Christians are allowed to pray inside museums, similarly he can pray namaz in Armenian churches,” said Ahmet Insel.

The Turkish writer arrived in Armenia to participate in a book festival. Presentation of Armenian version of Dialogue sur le tabou arménien (Dialogue about the Armenian Tabou) co-authored by Ahmet Insel and Michel Marian was held during the festival. Read more...(392 words)

The book chronicles the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and recounts a people’s struggle for justice in the face of a century of silence and denial.

During the interview, which was aired during the prime morning time slot, Bill Handel addressed both the efforts within the United States to ensure that the US government appropriately acknowledges the Armenian Genocide and Turkey’s ongoing denial.

Handel, a well known and nationally syndicated radio talk show host, has discussed the Armenian Genocide during past shows. Read more...(326 words, 5 images)

Commentary

The source of Armenia’s misery and humiliation, we often hear, is not capitalism per se, but rather “gangster capitalism,” “a broken system,” “capitalism run amok.”

The goal for the future, then, is to “fix the system,” to reform capitalism, to make it more like regular, pure, genuine Free Enterprise, the kind of capitalism that works. But what if Armenia’s actually existing capitalism already is genuine capitalism?

An economist once observed that the only existential meaning of “enterprise” in the term free enterprise is “whatever capitalists happen to be doing at the time”–and “free” is the accompanying demand that they be allowed to do it. Read more...(1503 words)

Ukraine’s ministry of internal affairs has launched a campaign against illegal casinos amid fears that a large network of underground gambling dens could be providing an income source for the son of the country’s disgraced former president Viktor Yanukovych.

The new crackdown on unlawful casinos – an ongoing scourge for law enforcement agencies in Ukraine since regulation was made stiffer with a 2009 law – was launched on Dec. 8 after an announcement on Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov’s official Facebook page.

Avakov, who keeps a lively and occasionally angry Facebook commentary on current affairs, pledged to put a complete stop to the establishments within ten days; first in the capital of Kyiv, then the rest of the nation. Read more...(317 words)

Here it is dear readers, the debut of a weekly column I hope to maintain on a regular basis.

It’s sort of a catch-all of news snippets, irreverent commentary, and personal observations on what’s happened during the week here in Yerevan, and throughout Armenia.. Hopefully, you’ll find it interesting, if not slightly diverting.

Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Regards – Hrant

Oct. 2 – Protests Throughout Armenia: A Game of Numbers & Solidarity

Three separate protest rallies took place in Armenia today.

As Hetq reported earlier, business owners in the town of Sevan kept their stores and factories shut to protest changes to the so-called volume (sales) tax. Local residents flocked to the bread factory to wait on line for a loaf or two. Read more...(891 words)

Zhou Yongkang, one of China’s most powerful former leaders, is under investigation in the highest-level corruption inquiry since the Communist Party came into power in 1949.

Under current president Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is investigating Zhou for “serious disciplinary violations,” as the officialXinhua news agency reports. Media has not yet, however, specified the allegations against him.

The probe is an attempt to show the length to which Xi and the party will go in order to combat abuse of power reportsThe Wall Street Journal.

A commentary published in the officialPeoples Daily makes the point that regardless of an official’s rank or supporters, punishment will result for violating laws or the party’s discipline. Read more...(197 words)

“The whole thing started with a scene straight out of a mobster movie. It was around 6 p.m. when more than a dozen men from two organized crime groups opened fire on each other in a North Hollywood parking lot. Witnesses say nearly everyone was armed, and the shootout quickly went mobile. The men took off in cars, exchanging fire as they weaved through the Whitsett Avenue traffic.”

Stories such as this are not unique to Armenians in the American press, but this investigative report recently published in the LA Weekly is about Armenian Power, the Los Angeles based Armenian gang that operates in the heavily Armenian populated communities of Glendale, Burbank, and North Hollywood. Read more...(1217 words)